Mrs Bandaranaikeled protest campaigns against the Dudley-Chelvanayagam Pact, a portion of which entailed the implementation of the Reasonable Use of Tamil Act, which had been introduced by Prime Minister S. W. R. D. Bandaranaike in 1958 but hadn’t been implemented since. The main protest campaign started at the Vihara Maha Devi Park in Colombo at which the large gathering, bringing together supporters of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party, Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Communist Party, including Buddhist monks, pledged to protect language, religion, democracy and nationalism.